‘Bras are a curse!’ How lockdown changed readers’ views of their breasts

 A year since the pandemic started, women’s bodies and habits have changed. Here they discuss underwiring, sleep underwear, and how going bra-free helps with polymastia

‘Lockdown has released me from the bra’

I was a teen in the 70s and morphed into a feminist. I find bras hideously uncomfortable; I only started wearing one in 2018 when I went back to work and the lack of confidence that often besieges women over 60 made me too self-conscious to face the public bra-free. Lockdown has released me from the bra, and the job, and I doubt I’ll wear one again. Jackie, writer, Midlands

‘Underwired bras now seem an unkind way to treat my body’

Underwired bras were my staple. That all changed in lockdown. I lost my job and within a few weeks had decided to retrain as a personal trainer. I’ve spent the past year in a sports bra. The rigidity and harshness of a wire now seems like an unkind way to treat my body. And lockdown has taught me a lot about being kinder. Recently I found a lump in my breast. Fortunately, it was nothing serious, but as I sat in the hospital waiting for the results of the tests, I knew some of the other women sitting with me would not be so lucky. That rather frightening experience further reinforced my appreciation for my little breasts as they are, and I’ll carry on being kind to them. Gabrielle O’Hare, personal trainer, Manchester

‘Covid made it possible for me to go braless for an entire year’ (posed by model). Photograph: Anetlanda/Getty Images/iStockphoto

‘Gravity hasn’t had the drastic effect I feared’

I don’t wear a bra when I am at home or working in my studio. A year ago I said: ‘If this lockdown carries on for any length of time, my boobs will be down at my waist!’ But gravity hasn’t had as drastic effect as I feared (yet). Anonymous, Scotland

‘Given the culture of my island, nipples would cause havoc’

I used to always need underwiring, since I’m top-heavy. Post-pandemic, I have given up wearing bras at home and only wear them when out. I wish bras weren’t necessary, but given the culture of my little island, nipples would cause pure havoc, car crashes and maybe even something tabled in parliament. It’s interesting, given that photographs of native women before colonial rule include bare-chested women. How these notions of covering up integrated into our society is something I ponder often. Bras are a curse! Minal Wickrematunge, designer and artist, Sri Lanka

‘Perhaps I’ll never wear one again’

Bra-wearing was always an uncomfortable thing for me. Since I fed my three children, my breasts have grown to a size that made not wearing a bra an impossibility. However, I suffer from polymastia and the third breast that developed into a complete breast after breastfeeding is directly under the right breast, exactly where the lower band of a bra normally rests. Covid made it possible for me to go braless for an entire year and I don’t regret it. Perhaps I’ll never wear one again. Elaine, teacher, Germany

‘I have bought a lot of new bras this year’

I seem to have bought more bras this year than any year previously – all sports bras, bralettes and sleep bras. Isn’t it funny how you think you are the master of your own actions, only to realise you’re part of a much bigger wave? Helen Berry, Cambridgeshire

‘I have ventured back into underwired bras’

Before lockdown I had a partner and I had a selection of underwired bras. The relationship became more strained through the early weeks of lockdown, and we eventually withdrew from each other. Then I found a breast lump in June, and was swiftly referred and diagnosed with cancer. I had surgery in August, and spent three months recovering. My only possible bras were post-surgical ones. These are functional, old-lady-style garments.

Since the new year, I have re-measured my assets (still intact) and gradually ventured into some smooth textured, but now underwired, rather more attractive bras. I find I feel more secure in a sleep bra at night, and sometimes I keep it on a couple of hours in the mornings. After all, there’s now no one else to please, which is a shame … Janet, retired lecturer, Leeds

‘A good bra is a fundamental part of feeling good’

Before my son was born, it was always my intention to breastfeed, so in the run-up to the birth, I bought an assortment of nursing bras in varying sizes with a view to being ready for anything. All the baby advice tells you that your breasts will change, but what it doesn’t say is that they will change week-on-week and nothing will ever fit consistently. I think it’s safe to say I hated the nursing bras! Chronically uncomfortable, with lumps and rolls in the fabric. I finished breastfeeding just a few weeks ago and I cannot tell you the utter bliss and luxury of finally being able to wear a wired bra again.

I’ve come to realise that a good bra is a fundamental part of feeling good. In many ways, the pandemic has helped me avoid the stress of going out in an uncomfortable bra, knowing that I didn’t look right, in other ways it has helped me realise the bizarre way in which it brings structure to life. Good bra on, ready for the day. Bad bra on, things just aren’t right. Vanessa Scanlan, information analyst for the NHS, Essex

‘Going braless was an act of rebellion’

My underwired bras must think I’m dead. When quarantine began I immediately stopped wearing them. I wore sports bras at first, then went full braless for six or seven months (I’m a 36E so this was an act of utter rebellion). Being totally braless wasn’t great for working from home; Zoom calls aside, I never felt like I transitioned from lounge time to work time. So, I finally splurged on two bralettes made for bigger chests. I guess the physical constraint helps remind me that I’m “in the office”, so to speak. Alicia, New York

Photograph: Galina Zhigalova/Getty Images/EyeEm

‘Lockdown made me realise that boobs aren’t everything’

I have no boobs, hence I wear a bra – so I gain some. But lockdown has made me realise that boobs aren’t everything and I’ve spent all my life persecuted by hammocks that just give me pain. One benefit of having no boobs – everyone always looks me in the eyes. Jan Atkins, graphic designer, Hammersmith

‘I dread going back to the daily bra’

I have proudly ditched my bra while working from home and I am sure my 32FF boobs have started to become firmer as they have had to hold themselves up. I dread going back to daily bra-wearing and recoil as I remember the pain it caused me. Societal norms be damned. Anonymous, London

‘I stopped wearing bras altogether’

I live in a fairly conservative city on the Muslim-majority island of Java. I was specifically told before moving here that it’s considered socially unacceptable for women’s nipples to show through clothes. This worked fine for the first year I lived there, but once the pandemic started and I wasn’t leaving my apartment, I stopped wearing bras altogether. On a humid, 35C day, the last thing you want is a heavy cotton bra collecting your boob sweat. Now that the city is reopening, I am daunted by the prospect of going back to daily bras. I’m actually looking into moving to a less conservative island, just to get away from this pressure to cover up. Sydney Michelle, teacher and writer, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

‘Bra-wearers put up with daily nuisance’

The way I think about bras has changed. Why don’t more of them fasten at the front?! It’s really awkward to strap yourself into and fasten them at the back, especially if you’ve got physical issues. It’s not until you stop and think about it that you realise its just another daily nuisance that bra-wearers put up with. Maybe it’s a structural thing, but human beings have built impossible structures before – bridges, tunnels, extraordinary hats – so surely all it needs is someone to take on the challenge. Maybe bridges are just considered of greater importance than the everyday comfort of more than half the adult population. Anonymous

‘I dread going back to daily bra-wearing.’ Photograph: dannikonov/Getty Images/iStockphoto

‘I became obsessed with finding the right bra’

Lockdown was an absolute godsend for me in the underwear department, as I was recovering from a single mastectomy in September 2019, followed by radiotherapy, which effectively toasted my chest wall and has left me with constant soreness and pain. There was such pressure to undergo reconstructive surgery following the removal of a breast, but I was always adamant that I didn’t want a Frankenboob, so I elected to go flat on my left side.

Enter the world of “foobs” – hospital discharge triangular cushions, realistic NHS silicon breasts, lovingly hand-knitted knockers – a myriad of false breasts, none of which I quite got on with. I spent hundreds of pounds on specialist bras with rigid upholstery that gripped my chest wall like an iron band. Following Facebook groups’ recommendations, I tried cheapo supermarket cropped tops.

My life had become an obsession with finding the right bra. Then lockdown came, and with it the opportunity to dress for comfort rather than to satisfy the constant pressure to disguise my missing breast. Gradually, I became more and more confident about spending time without a foob. I started going foobless around the house with my family, then gradually started introducing short shopping trips and family walks, and within months I had given up on post-surgical bras and foobs altogether.

I came to realise how much pain and inconvenience I had been putting myself through to make myself look “normal” so “nobody would ever know” and “you can’t tell”. I’ve had breast cancer. I can tell. I do still know. I am in daily pain. I don’t conform to a “body normal” standard any more. I am an amputee. I shouldn’t have to hide it. Lockdown gave me the chance to come to terms with this, and to mentally adjust at my own pace, for which I shall be forever grateful. Anonymous, Scotland

(Source: The Guardian)

Japanese 'lactivist' seeks to help young moms overcome breastfeeding hurdles

Midori Ogino champions breastfeeding as a biological gift that helps newborns survive and thrive. Making it a cultural norm and erasing societal taboos over breastfeeding in public is an investment that pays back many times over.

Ogino is a so-called lactivist not because she pushes breastfeeding at all costs, but because she thinks it is time governments invest in the promotion of breastfeeding, make every drop of breast milk count and give mothers the care they deserve.

She knows of too many Japanese women who fail to reach their breastfeeding goals because of the various barriers placed in their way. Successful breastfeeding isn’t a matter of luck, rather it is the product of practical knowledge and social support, she says.

“I’m not saying we should ignore women’s choices or desires, but it scares me that millennial moms are repeating the ‘formula is just as good’ mantra. It’s simply not true,” Ogino says.

"Lactivist" Midori Ogino says successful breast-feeding isn't a matter of luck but rather the product of practical knowledge and social support. | GETTY IMAGES

“In many cultures, child care is not down to one mother, but a whole village. Public breastfeeding is a taboo in Japan, and women have to hide in the bathroom to feed their baby. This is how nursing is viewed in our society.”

Ogino doesn’t want to make bottle-feeding mothers feel guilty, but she wants to bust myths using scientific evidence and common sense while ensuring that mothers are provided the accurate, unbiased information they need to make informed choices about breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding is a natural act, but it is also a skill that takes practice. Arming yourself with important facts about breastfeeding before the baby arrives is essential, but Ogino says every mother needs nonjudgmental support through her infant feeding journey.

In the absence of a village, professional support is vital to reduce feelings of isolation.

As the founder of Bonyu Lab, a company that measures the nutritional value of breast milk to help mothers produce the best quality milk for their babies, the 37-year-old argues that it is the way media frames breastfeeding as an individual choice that is the real source of the problem.

“Some say nursing is spiritual and they question the ethics of testing human milk. For others, it’s a feminist issue. I’m not saying formula is harmful, but I just don’t want women to be fooled by the false information that’s out there,” Ogino says.

“I want them to make well-informed decisions regarding the breastfeeding of their baby. The first 1,000 days of the baby’s life are the most influential in their development. All babies deserve the best possible start in life,” she says.

In her other role as CEO of Brown Sugar 1st, Ogino has helped fuel the coconut oil health trend in Japan. She says public opinion is becoming increasingly pro-organic and anti-genetically modified organisms, but views are still divided when it comes to breastfeeding.

She received bogus “advice” that sabotaged her efforts to breastfeed her only daughter and knows how these mixed messages on the subject can leave a woman confused and overwhelmed.

Contrary to what the pretty, pink nursery pamphlets or the celebrity “brelfies,” or breastfeeding selfies, on social media might suggest, breastfeeding is time-consuming, draining, difficult, and painful, especially in the initial trial-and-error days.

Many moms say they feel like a failure when their milk supply doesn’t match their baby’s needs, while dads can feel a little jealous as if they have been left off “the team” if they can’t bring food and contentment to their baby in the same way.

By turning breast milk nutrition profiling into a business and organizing her first public breastfeeding event last summer — where women were able to gather and talk about issues concerning their children and breastfeeding — Ogino isn’t trying to ostracize the 1 to 5 percent of women who are physically unable to breastfeed.

But if doctors and health care providers are recommending breast milk substitutes without medical reasons or offering free formula samples, women need to ask themselves who is profiting from her “free” choice, she says.

Fortune Business Insights estimates global infant formula market sales will reach $103.75 billion (about ¥11.4 trillion) by 2026, compared to $45.12 billion in 2018.

Midori Ogino participates at CES in Las Vegas on Jan. 8 as one of the companies in Jetro’s J-Startup Program booth. | COURTESY OF MIDORI OGINO / VIA KYODO

Yoko Akan, a Japanese woman with a Turkish husband, says she is glad she didn’t listen to her doctors or ignore her gut instinct when she was still trying to establish a breastfeeding routine with her newborn baby.

“I hated how my doctor tried to coerce me into supplementing with formula because my son’s weight fell off the growth curve. He was alert and active, and I saw no warning signs. I was so gung-ho the doctor let me have my way, but I had to fight,” Akan says.

Akan, who has breastfed standing up on a commuter train and in restaurants, including at a ramen shop, says she makes plenty of milk when she is in Turkey, but the stress she feels in Tokyo slows the flow.

“It’s sad that many women, through no fault of their own, have to stop breastfeeding before they are ready to. These mothers are not failing, but rather, being failed by a government that hasn’t been investing enough in maternity care,” Ogino says.

“We’re mammals. We’re built to lactate. It’s human biology. Breast milk is too good to waste. It’s not just the magic contents but the skin-to-skin contact and all those lovely hormones you release.”

In September 2018, Ogino hired a team of health care professionals and founded Bonyu.lab. Bonyū in Japanese literally means “mother’s milk.”

Through a monthly subscription service, the firm offers a basic bonyū testing kit that costs ¥9,800. All the mother needs to do is fill out a health questionnaire and send frozen samples of her breast milk to a lab to understand what she is feeding her baby.

The testing lab is the brainchild of Ogino, who wondered if there was anything she could do to help nursing mothers take charge of their own bodies and breastfeeding outcomes. When the mother receives her test results, she also gets practical nutritional advice from a dietitian. The samples are also used to evaluate the relationship between the mother’s dietary habits and physical activity level and an infant’s condition.

“There may be other companies that are measuring nutrients in breast milk, but we’re the first company in the world to analyze subjective and objective data, study the mystery of a mother’s milk and provide personalized solutions,” Ogino says.

Ogino does not doubt that any woman who chooses to breastfeed should be able to do so anytime, anywhere, without shame or criticism. She feels the conversation around breastfeeding needs to change so that women can openly discuss their struggles.

Families, communities, and workplaces each have a role to play in affording women the time and space necessary for breastfeeding, she says. It promotes healthier moms, healthier babies, and thus healthier societies. It’s a win-win-win.

“Today, the topic of how and when we feed our babies sets off a national debate. We need to be able to talk about breastfeeding and leave emotions out of it. Saying ‘breast is best’ is oversimplifying a complicated issue for mothers,” Ogino says.

The World Health Organization recommends that babies be breastfed exclusively for the first six months of their lives and continue for “up to two years of age or beyond.”

Apart from the added bonus of breastfeeding burning extra calories for the mother, exclusive breastfeeding is associated with reduced risk of breast and ovarian cancers, Type 2 diabetes, and postpartum depression, according to the WHO.

Breast milk contains antibodies, which help protect babies against infection, and it can also help prevent sudden infant death syndrome. Breastfeeding exposes your baby to lots of flavors, and it is said that children who are breastfed are less likely to be picky eaters.

“I’m not saying you should be hell-bent on making breastfeeding work because I know the pressure to breastfeed can hurt moms. But I know in Japan, lack of breastfeeding support is often cited by mothers as one of the key reasons for premature weaning,” Ogino says.

“Bonyu.lab is committed to being right by the mother’s side so she’ll feel empowered to breastfeed longer, with less stress and more enjoyment. We want to support these women because they’re making health care decisions that aren’t just for themselves.”

A breast milk test kit for parents to use at home | COURTESY OF MIDORI OGINO / VIA KYODO

Ogino warns consumers about misleading labeling on formulas and asks them to consider the environmental cost of bottle feeding, including the amount of water and energy required to prepare formula, whether it be powdered, liquid concentrate, or ready-to-feed.

“Breast milk produces zero garbage, zero greenhouse gases, and zero water footprint. It’s the most environmentally friendly food available. I want my daughter to grow up thinking the human body produces nature’s perfect baby food,” she says.

In an ideal world, Ogino says the value of breastfeeding would go uncontested, and 90 percent of all mothers would do so, even with the help of a breast pump or some formula feeds sprinkled in here and there.

According to the WHO, only 41 percent of infants were exclusively breastfed in the first six months of life in 2018 as recommended, far short of its 2030 global target of 70 percent.

“Women cannot breastfeed alone. Breastfeeding isn’t only about the act of feeding. We all play a role in supporting breastfeeding. It’s a collective societal responsibility,” Ogino says.

“The important thing is that women don’t face societal pressure and unrealistic expectations of motherhood. Women shouldn’t have to choose between breastfeeding and returning to work. The two activities can coexist.”

We need to ensure our governments create an optimal environment for women and children to thrive, and all of us need to be involved in safeguarding their right to breastfeed, Ogino says.

“We need to protect, support, and promote breastfeeding and mother-baby bonding. Breastfeeding saves lives, saves time, and saves money. Investing in our children’s future is everyone’s business.”

(Source: JT)

Spilt milk

I am four months a mother, a fact proclaimed by my son’s age. We will be forever tethered to each other by time, two hands on a clock. I don’t think much about this until after birth.

I am four months a mother and have returned to work and need to pump every few hours. This is not only to have milk the babysitter can bottle-feed to Oliver, not only to relieve pain in my chest or avoid clogged ducts and infection. I need to pump because without a baby constantly at my breast, my supply will dry up and I won’t be able to feed my son at all. My blind body accepts that the robotic suction is a hungry baby’s mouth.

I am four months a mother when I call my mother for help. I work as a college application essay specialist in the suburban county where I grew up, an hour away from where I live with my husband and son. It is the community in which my father teaches, though he now lives with a new partner in Manhattan. It is the community in which my divorced, single mother still resides.

I have called my mother because I can’t figure out how to be a professional while breastfeeding. Where to pump? I tell her I had an academic job interview in New Jersey two weeks before and didn’t feel comfortable asking my would-be boss if there was a place to relieve full breasts and so wound up in the bathroom of a pizzeria by the train station. Pumping sessions take at least twenty minutes and I tell her how the customers knocked and then banged on the door, and that I emerged into a cluster of disapproving eye-rolls and head wags. Last week, I say, I pumped in my parked car, but it turns out that disrobing in daylight and affixing plastic shields and tubes to your breasts while your nipples are visibly tugged and squeezed unnerves passersby.

I have four clients on Tuesday afternoon, I say, and each session is an hour long, and my body will need relief. I have nowhere to go.

*

I am four months a mother and my tutorial work-spaces are dining tables lit by chandeliers and kitchen tables strewn with bills. All of my bosses are mothers. They are the ones who hire me, the ones who pay me, the ones who worry over the phone about their children’s futures.

My roster of students includes a teenager whose father died in a terrorist attack. He doesn’t remember much—he was little—but is regularly told how much he looks and sounds and acts like his father. I gnaw the fleshy inside of my cheek as he describes what it feels like to wear his father’s face. How agonizing it must be for his mother, I think, to watch her son grow into her late husband. Or maybe, I think, how beautiful. I am four months a mother and want to hug the woman in the other room, widowed in the most heinous and violent way, sole parent to a child who will depend on her for everything, and I feel the pressure in my chest—all grief and fluid and fear—when I tell her, insufficiently, that I am sorry.

*

I ask Mom, “Can I come by after my second tutoring? To pump?”

She is quiet, says, “To my house?”

Her house was once our house. It is the house in which I grew up, from the age of two until I left for college. I am four months a mother and still unused to the pronoun: my. I suck on it like an ice cube. It anesthetizes my tongue.

The second-floor bedroom with the fuzzy blue carpet bears all my marks. Faint dots on the walls from sticky tack that held up posters of my paramours: Bon Jovi and Eddie Vedder. A wooden desk in whose drawer I scratched my initials. The twin bed I hid beneath when home alone, petrified of any ghostly noise I discerned. Beside it is the radio to which I pressed my ear long after I should’ve been asleep to hear Love Lines on Z100, so eager to find out what men wanted. That’s the mattress on which I applied what I learned.

In the closet: stiff Archie comics and letters from sleepaway camp and ballet slippers that belonged to a beloved friend who died in fifth grade and the mustard-colored safe I received for Hanukkah and into which I stuffed Zima and clove cigarettes. Also: a swirly painting of a fetus in utero I made for Mom one Mother’s Day in junior high and snatched back in high school when I found it in the attic. I had wanted her to hang it up. I was always so full of wanting.

“Yes,” I tell my mother. “I want to come to your house.” She has kept my room more or less intact. With four other bedrooms, she doesn’t need the space.

“I have an appointment,” she says, “I won’t be here.” The implication: if she’s not there, I can’t be either.

“It’s not personal,” she says when I protest, which I do repeatedly.

She had the locks changed after Dad moved out seven years prior and won’t give keys to anyone—not her children or the neighbors or the cleaning lady. Nor will she order anything off the internet or leave her dog tied up outside a store or record her own voice on the answering machine. Fear is an omnivore.

Her decision is not personal, but I feel it in my person. In the seize of my stomach. In the curl of my toes. In the gash that appears when I tear my thumb with my teeth.

I say, “Don’t you trust me?”

“Yes,” she says, “but this is what makes me comfortable.” Her words are another locked door. There’s no way through, no explanation beyond. Five years earlier, during a difficult stretch in our relationship, one of her friends had taken me aside: can your mother do anything to show that she trusts you, besides giving you a house key?

I’d answered too readily: no.

*

I am four months a mother and my mother is four months a grandmother and she visits us often in Brooklyn. She will become the grandma who laughs the loudest, who attends birthday parties and piano recitals, whose pocketbook produces gag gifts, as it did in my youth—whoopee cushions and Groucho Marx glasses and gummy eyeballs. She is the woman who made me into an artist, the one who will encourage my children’s creativity, too. Still, she didn’t breastfeed, and can’t appreciate why I’m so committed. What’s the big deal about formula? she asks often. Plenty of mothers use formula and their kids are fine.

*

I am four months a mother and it is winter in New York and everything is a shade of shadow: the sky, the trees, the street. At a long, narrow dining table, I work with a student on an essay about adventuring while a dog sleeps at my feet. This sixteen-year-old hiked Mount Rainier to watch the sunrise, scuba dived in Belize, chased fresh powder on the steepest slopes. I like to take risks, he tells me, to feel adrenaline in my veins. How undaunted he seems. How intrepid. As we say goodbye, I wonder if this makes his mother nervous.

I set out toward my childhood home, and am quickly unsettled by how lonesome it seems. The mammoth maple I used to climb, centerpiece of our front yard, contracted a disease and croaked. The grass is patchy and frosted. A shingle has slipped off the roof. I zip into the driveway, the same driveway my grandpa, my mother’s father, would glide into in his Cadillac on Sundays, unannounced. If my father answered and we kids weren’t home, my grandpa would leave without saying hello to my mother. I’d hear about this afterward. Sometimes I’d find her crying. My whole childhood I watched her crave her parents’ attention and affection. I never saw them kiss her, never heard them say I love you. How does one learn to give if one has not received?

After a few days of pleading—“Let me think about it,” she said on Sunday; “I’m figuring out how this would work,” she said on Monday—my mother has agreed to leave a key, so long as I return it to its hiding place before I go. I shut off the car and decide this is a meaningful gesture. Maybe, since I’m four months a mother and she’s four months a grandmother, it signifies a shift. Maybe she will get increasingly comfortable loaning out the key and eventually offer me one to keep.

I will be wrong about this. She won’t leave the key again. In fact on a future visit, when Oliver is three and I have a new infant, we will arrive earlier than planned and Mom won’t be home yet and Oliver will have to poop and he will do so in the woods beside the house—her house. Mom, when she finally arrives, will try to downplay it, will say “It’s like camp!” but what will pass over her face for just a second, a cloud eclipsing the sun, will be regret. Mom cannot help this web of distrust, never meant for it to ensnare us all.

Today, though, when I am four months a mother, I have access for the first and last time. I follow her instructions: step behind a bush near the side door, locate the green watering can and the slate tile beneath it and the plastic bag beneath that, inside of which is the key. Bingo! I rub the metal between my fingers. It is thicker than any others I’ve seen. Heavier, too. More difficult to duplicate.

My breasts hurt. I slide the key into lock and the teeth bite and I push open the door into one of the most familiar physical spaces I know, all blonde wood and whimsical tchotchkes, and also the most familiar sound: a beeping alarm. Blood glugs in my gut. This wasn’t supposed to happen. At the keypad, I punch in the numbers I remember from childhood but they don’t register—of course they don’t register, because my mother has not only changed the locks, she has changed the code. I try her birthday, try all ones, something easy because Mom has a fragile memory, try numbers in a row and numbers in a square and the buttons squish under my sweaty fingers and the system now assumes that I’m an unwelcome visitor, a thief, a criminal, and all at once the volume swells and a siren wails and a mechanized voice explodes through the wall: You have violated a protected area! The police were called! Leave immediately!

I fumble for my phone, call my mother, plug the other ear. No answer.

A lactating body is sensitive to sound. It assumes loud noise is a wailing, hungry baby, and responds in kind: my breasts bulge and harden and cramp.

It is 3:15. I have to be at the next student’s house at 3:45. The only way my milk will let down is if I’m relaxed. I am not relaxed. Prickles of panic climb my arms. I cannot take a deep breath. Amid the earsplitting distress signal and robotic commands—Leave! Immediately!—I withdraw the plastic funnels and valves and membranes and tubes from my bag and pull off my shirt and swap my nursing bra for a strapless bra designed to hold these parts in place. I fasten two small eight-ounce bottles, one to each side.

The phone on the wall rings, nearly inaudible inside the tumult. An officer. He needs to ensure I’m a resident and not an intruder. He asks for the secret password. I do not have the secret password. So many ways to be walled out.

“I’m the daughter,” I shout. I say, “childhood home.” I say, “misunderstanding.” My breasts deliver one fat drop apiece. I cannot bear to watch.

The officer will be dispatching someone to the property, he says. Protocol.

Six minutes until the police arrive. I know this from childhood. I sit at the kitchen table, in the same chair I occupied for our family meals. The table at which my father tutored after school and on weekends, all yellow legal pads and chewed Bic pen caps, a space as insignificant to his students as my students’ kitchens are to me.

Taped to the wall to my right: a vertical poster that reads EAT EAT EAT until the bottom prong of the final E disappears as if into a mouth and EAT becomes FAT. A sign that sapped pleasure out of every childhood bite and once caused an overweight friend to burst into tears. A mantra that befit my mother’s restrictive diet and my grandmother’s, too, that evoked the one time I ever recall Grandma coming over for lunch—how she removed from her purse a single hard-boiled egg, which she placed in the center of her plate. “This is all I need,” she said. Later, in adulthood, I will think: even their lips were locked.

One ounce per bottle. Oliver eats six ounces per meal. I need more time. More air. More mercy. I pull up baby pictures on my phone, all huge eyes and cheeks and toothless gums. EAT EAT LIVE.

The alarm’s an electric current. Violated! It vibrates the hairs on my arms, swings the papier-mâché parrot hanging from the ceiling, threatens to dislodge the Post-its affixed to my mother’s fridge. Protected! See my family assembled around the counter there? It’s Friday night, Shabbat, and we’ve lit a ceramic candelabra on whose base is a miniature Adam and Eve and a demonic red snake. My mother is baking honeyed apples and the air is sweet and warm, and we’re taking turns expressing gratitude, saying nice things we did that week—I told Nicki I liked her dress, I say—and my father puts his hands on my mother’s bowed head—Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe—and my siblings and I poke our faces into the tent their bodies make. Home.

One siren overwhelms the other. A cruiser has pulled up alongside my car in the driveway, and red and blue lights swirl around the kitchen. I shut off the pump and disassemble the parts and quickly pull on my shirt.

Two white, male officers are framed in the doorway, a sight that would have made me panic as a teenager, would’ve induced guilt even if I’d done nothing wrong. How many times I’d tumbled through this door drunk or high or in the aftermath of making out, convinced my parents would smell me, would know.

“Sorry,” I shout. “No emergency.” I feel heat in my bra. “I’m the homeowner’s daughter,” I say. My left breast, the more prolific one, has sprung a leak. A dark blossom unfurls on my shirt. I cross my arms. One of the men asks how to spell my name, writes it down. My mom was supposed to leave the house unarmed, I say. I don’t say she was supposed to do this because she wasn’t comfortable giving me the code. I don’t say, It’s not personal.

My phone vibrates. “Oh, shit,” Mom says when she hears what’s happening. “Shit, shit.” I hand her to a cop.

*

I will pack up my stuff in haste—already late for the next appointment—and won’t properly affix the bottle caps. On the drive home that night, I will simmer and fizz and yearn. When I arrive in Brooklyn, the base of my bag will be sticky and damp, the bottles empty.

(Source: The Paris Review) 

How dare a woman breastfeed her baby on a plane! She might offend the bigots

When Dutch airline KLM says it may ask nursing mothers to cover themselves if passengers object, misogyny is winning

Well, I for one welcome the news: as of this week, anybody asked to cover up while breastfeeding on a KLM flight can now walk, bare-breasted, across the plane, milk firing into the air, their baby howling at their shoulder, and immediately hand that screaming, hungry, suffering child to the person who made the complaint, who must then look after that baby for the entirety of the journey while the previously breastfeeding passenger lies back, watches a film, reads their book, has a glass of wine or enjoys a much-needed nap.

Because, my friends, that is precisely what I would do if someone asked me to cover myself while breastfeeding. This week, the Dutch airline KLM garnered a lactic tonne of deserved criticism after it put out a tweet stating that “to ensure that all our passengers of all backgrounds feel comfortable on board, we may request a mother to cover herself while breastfeeding, should other passengers be offended by this”. This was itself a response to one customer’s complaint, posted on Facebook, that she had been asked by a flight attendant to cover herself with a blanket – you know, like an actual fire – while breastfeeding her baby because someone else on the plane had complained.

 ‘I’m no theologist, but even I know that in every major world religion breastfeeding is positively encouraged.’ Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA

 We're talking about western patriarchy under which a breast is often interpreted as a something solely erotic

Before we get into the pure misogyny of telling total strangers that the sight of a few centimetres of skin, between collarbone and ribs, is somehow unbearably disturbing, impossibly erotic or physically repulsive, let’s just have a quick chew on the cracked nipple of that phrase “passengers of all backgrounds”. I’m no theologist, but even I know that in every major world religion breastfeeding is positively encouraged. In Genesis, the Bible says: “By the God of your father who will help you, by the Almighty who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that crouches beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb.”

According to Islam, breastfeeding forgives you of all your minor sins. Here’s a hadith narrated by Ja’far al-Sadiq: “Every time a woman becomes pregnant, during the whole period of pregnancy she has the status of one who fasts, one who worships during the night, and one who fights for Allah with her life and possessions ... and when the period of breastfeeding the child is finished, one of the great angels of Allah taps her side and says: ‘Start your deeds afresh, for Allah has forgiven all your minor sins.’”

In Judaism, the Shulchan Aruch (sometimes called the Book of Jewish Law) recommends breastfeeding for 24 months.

In Hinduism, breastfeeding mothers like the goddess Parvati are found throughout the pantheon, and the ancient Sanskrit text Sushruta Samhita states: “May four oceans, full of milk, constantly abide in both your breasts, you blessed one, for the increase of the strength of the child!” So, let’s be clear: these customers of “all backgrounds” don’t appear to have any religious foundation for their squeamishness, fear, repulsion or anger. They are not speaking on behalf of any faith.

Which means that what we’re talking about here is the old-fashioned culture of western, capitalist patriarchy under which a breast is often interpreted as something solely erotic, which must therefore only be visible jiggling nipple-free in music videos, or in its fetished entirety in pornography. Or perhaps we’re talking about the cultural background of angry men who find the very fleshy existence of anybody other than themselves an assault on their very soul. The sort of people who turn puce at the sight of a woman eating in public, speaking in anything louder than a whisper and otherwise taking up all that room they wanted for their own special man things.

Or perhaps KLM is simply protecting the sensitivities of the sort of upstanding fellow passenger who drinks five whisky and cokes, scratches their crotch while watching their little telly, turns their headphones up high, doesn’t flush the plane toilet, pours a packet of cheese and onion crisps straight into their mouth, shouts across the aisle to call their friend Spuggie a “shirt-lifter”, leers at the flight attendant, pushes their knees into the seat in front of them and then, spotting a woman breastfeeding, decides that the smell of breastmilk is making their hangover worse.

The fact is that cabin pressure within a plane sends babies into a frenzy of discomfort. While adults make be able to suck mints, chew gum or drink water, the roaring pain within an infant’s ear canal can only really be soothed by feeding – either from a bottle or a breast. With airport security as it is, those parents who can may well choose the simple, healthy and free option of breastfeeding while on a plane. The idea that some self-appointed moral arbiter can then go around the plane ordering a flight attendant to throw blankets over anybody they deem “unsuitable”, like patches of sick on a student corridor, would be laughable if it wasn’t so tiresomely bigoted.

As passengers you have two options: respect the right of all parents to feed their child however they want; or sit in a plane full of screaming babies and toddlers, strapped into seatbelts, disoriented, overstimulated and potentially scared, as the change of air pressure rips through their skulls like a drill. I know which I’d choose.

(Source: The Guardian)

Breast-ironing is abuse and could lead to prison term, says CPS

Exclusive: perpetrators could face up to 10 years in prison under new legal guidance

Relatives who “iron” a young girl’s chest with a hot stone or other objects to delay breast formation could face up to 10 years in prison, under new guidance published by the Crown Prosecution Service.

The guidance makes clear to police and prosecutors that breast-ironing, a ritual common in parts of Africa that now sometimes happens in the UK, is a crime that can be charged under existing law even if the victim is said to have consented.

In January the Guardian revealed anecdotal evidence of dozens of British cases of the practice, in which a girl’s chest is “ironed” with a hot stone to delay breast formation, thereby supposedly protecting them from unwanted male attention. The government issued a statement promising to tackle the practice, which it described as child abuse.

 A stone used a woman in Cameroon to ‘iron’ the breasts of her four daughters. Activists estimate at least 1,000 women and girls in Britain have undergone the abuse. Photograph: Véronique de Viguerie/Getty

“The message that we have is quite clear – breast-ironing is child abuse,” said Jaswant Narwal, a chief prosecutor who specialises in so-called “honour” abuse. “What we want is for these practices not to happen, because these are essentially criminal offences,” she told the Guardian.

While the move does not change the law to make breast-ironing a specific offence, the CPS said it hoped the guidance would provide reassurance to victims and a warning to perpetrators. “We hope this new guidance will give victims, police and prosecutors the confidence they need to bring perpetrators of this cruelty to justice,” Narwal said.

She said victims may be dissuaded from turning to the police because the practice may occur in the family home, where the perpetrator could be the victim’s own mother.

“Another reason is that they may not understand or believe that a crime has indeed been committed. That’s why this guidance is important - because it’s going to go someway to confirm the legal position … so that we can have some viable cases coming forward for prosecution.”

In March the National Education Union said breast-ironing awareness should be made part of the mandatory school curriculum to protect young girls from abuse.

Alex Carlile, a QC and peer who in January tabled questions in parliament concerning the practice, said the CPS guidance was “a welcome step forward”. “It is a clear warning that breast-ironing gives rise to a serious criminal charge. Those who do it are likely to be jailed,” he said.

Comfort, a woman who has spoken out about undergoing breast-ironing as a nine-year-old, said: “It’s a start at least. Now those [affected] children will know that the police are aware of it, that it’s nothing new … so that it doesn’t sound like they are talking about something foreign. And even the children themselves will now know that if there’s guidance, it’s serious – it’s a crime.”

Leyla Hussein, a British-Somali anti-FGM campaigner and psychotherapist, said prosecuting cases of breast-ironing under existing legislation was better than having a separate law, as is the case with female genital mutilation (FGM).

“Abuse is abuse,” she said. “We are not going to have a separate law if people started cutting hands or fingers. We got that so wrong when it came to FGM.”

Narwal stressed that the new guidance was not about criminalising families for their cultural practices. “It’s not a new law – it’s existing legislation. We respect families and we respect cultures. But where actual harm is being caused to children, that’s where it can be considered to be a criminal offence.”

Activistsestimate that at least 1,000 women and girls have been subjected to the abuse in the UK, but there has been no formal assessment of the prevalence of breast-ironing in the country.

(Source: The Guardian)

Mom donates her breast milk to Harvey victims

A generous Missouri mom is giving all she has for the victims of Hurricane Harvey — donating almost eight gallons of her own breast milk.

Danielle Palmer, 31, packed up 1,040 ounces of breast milk into a cooler, enough for about 346 feedings, and shipped them off to families affected by the devastating flooding, News4 reported.

“We have to have each other’s backs. We have to take care of each other,” the mom of three said.

Palmer said she had a stash of breast milk ready to go due to months of freezing and saving it after her son, Truett, couldn’t drink it.

“Truett has a congenital heart defect along with other underlying anomalies. For a big chunk of his life, he was unable to take my milk. Most of his nutrition came through IV,” said Palmer.

Palmer says she is happy to help the moms of Houston and that seeing the news and devastation of the storm made her emotional about those affected.

“With Truett’s heart defect, I don’t take that lightly but I also know I’m grateful for the situation God placed us in… I mean had we not been in this situation, we wouldn’t be able to share some of our love with the babies in Houston,” the mom said.

(Source: NY Post)

Motherhood isn’t sacrifice, it’s selfishness

When we talk about being a mom as a job or a duty we rob women of their power. Is motherhood a job, a sacrifice, a privilege or all of the above? Read what Karen Rinaldi, the author of the novel “The End of Men” and the founder and publisher of the Harper Wave imprint at HarperCollins, writes on NYT: 

I was taking a few weeks’ break from work over the summer. My family and I — my husband and my sons, then 9 and 7 — planned to spend the time at our house on the New Jersey shore. When my mother asked what we would be doing on our vacation, I told her we would be together — going to the beach and the nearby amusement park, cooking, playing in the yard.

In response, my mother said: “Oh, that’s not much of a vacation for you. I’ll bet you can’t wait to get back to work. Motherhood, it’s the hardest job in the world. All sacrifice!”

“Really?” was all I could say in response.

I was looking forward to uninterrupted time with my boys. We would spend days by the ocean and take trips to the boardwalk, where they would scream with delight while riding the roller coaster — the same one I’d ridden when I was their age, then ridden alongside them until Hurricane Sandy deposited it into the Atlantic. We’d ram one another with bumper cars; we’d ride the old-fashioned merry-go-round, waiting until my youngest son’s favorite horse, bright-blue Freddy, became available. Some days were sure to end in tears of exhaustion, but the tears didn’t outweigh the joy. Even on the bad days.

My mother was only trying to be sympathetic to my life as a working mother, but the self-satisfied way she proclaimed the sacrificial nature of motherhood grated. I don’t believe for one second that motherhood is the hardest job in the world nor that it is all sacrifice. Still, it wasn’t fair to blame her; she was merely parroting a common refrain. Once my annoyance lifted, in its place spread a kind of clarity that helped me to understand how these linguistic tropes reinforce the disempowerment of mothers and women.

The assertion of motherhood as sacrifice comes with a perceived glorification. A woman is expected to sacrifice her time, ambition and sense of self to a higher purpose, one more worthy than her own individual identity. This leaves a vacuum in the place of her value, one that others rush to fill.

When a woman becomes pregnant, she seems to become public property. Perhaps because bearing children ensures the continuation of the species, it is often prioritized as part of a larger social contract. Not only does this logic lead to an attempt to legislate women’s bodies, but also in smaller, everyday gestures, boundaries get crossed. Many friends tell stories about being touched by strangers during pregnancy, as if a woman’s maternal status turns her into a vessel to handle.

Written more than 30 years ago, Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” offers a cautionary tale of womanhood as sacrifice. In this dystopic novel, women are grouped according to the uses men determine for them: namely, sterile wives married for appearance or fertile “handmaids,” who are raped routinely for procreation. One male character declares that the woman must “learn in silence with all subjection” and that “she shall be saved by childbearing.” In this scenario, the act of motherhood is subverted for the benefit of those in power, and they get away with it because of the concept of motherhood as sacrifice.

When we cling to the idea of motherhood as sacrifice, what we really sacrifice is our sense of self, as if it is the price we pay for having children.

Motherhood is not a sacrifice, but a privilege — one that many of us choose selfishly. At its most atavistic, procreating ensures that our genes survive into the next generation. You could call this selfishness as biological imperative. On a personal level, when we bring into the world a being that is of us, someone we will protect and love and for whom we will do everything we can to help thrive and flourish, it begets the question, How is this selfless? Selflessness implies that we have no skin in the game. In motherhood, we’re all in.

By reframing motherhood as a privilege, we redirect agency back to the mother, empowering her, celebrating her autonomy instead of her sacrifice. Granted, some of us have more autonomy than others. There are many mothers who would not have chosen motherhood, for financial or personal reasons. Still, by owning our roles as mothers and refusing the false accolades of martyrdom, we do more to empower all women.

In my experience, when women talk among women, our ambivalence or frustration is rarely about our roles as mothers. (That doesn’t mean our kids don’t drive us crazy sometimes.) Rather, conversations turn to questions of how to manage the best part of our lives (those very kids who are driving us crazy) with our partners, careers and other responsibilities. And while many women derive their deepest fulfillment as mothers, it doesn’t preclude their ambition or fly in the face of leaning in or out or sideways.

Calling motherhood “the hardest job in the world” misses the point completely because having and raising children is not a “job.” No one will deny that there is exhaustion, fear and tedium. Raising a family is hard work, but so is every other meaningful aspect of our lives.

The language surrounding child rearing as a job surely derived from caregivers’ and homemakers’ efforts to be acknowledged as fulfilling an important role. And clearly raising children is one of the most important things we do — for both women and men — but that does not make it a job. In a job, an employer pays for services an employee agrees to perform. And there is a boss to whom the employee reports. In the case of parenting, who would that be?

That doesn’t mean we don’t want support — paid parental leave, more flexible working hours, publicly funded day care. But the cultural shift has to happen for the policies to follow. Martyrs, after all, don’t need or expect public services.

Fathers are rarely, if ever, spoken about in the same way that mothers are. It’s culturally acceptable for men to have children and professional identities without having to choose between the two. These unspoken biases run deep.

It reminds me of a friend whose husband complained about having to “babysit” the children while she went to dinner with friends. Has a woman ever “babysat” her own children? Things are changing, but the insidious inferences persist.

Further, with “women” and “family” as go-to cultural corollaries, studies show, terrifyingly, that these biases are being adopted by artificial intelligence, too. Calling motherhood a woman’s “job” only serves to keep a woman in her place. The priorities of mothers who work outside the home are often questioned. It’s as if women are forced to choose between ambition (or simply earning a living wage) and family.

If we start referring to motherhood as the beautiful, messy privilege that it is, and to tending to our children as the most loving yet selfish thing we do, perhaps we can change the biased language my mother used. Only when we stop talking about motherhood as sacrifice can we start talking about mothers the way that we deserve.

Should the Queen breastfeed? British Royals and their history of breastfeeding

Queen Victoria refused to breastfeed her children. Princess Diana, however, did not believe in the same.

Prince William and Kate Middleton seem to be setting major parenting goals for our generation, and for good reason. They're charming, fun-loving, and oh-so-royal! While we've known for quite a while that Kate breastfed her children, not much else is known about the other famous mothers of the British Royal family.

Do Queens and royals also breastfeed? Have they always done so? These are a few questions we are hoping to answer during the 25th World Breastfeeding Week.

Most history enthusiasts interested in European royal families would have heard the rumours that royal moms handed their kids over to wet nurses to be breastfed. This is simply not true. There were a few exceptions like Queen Victoria--yes, the famous queen who became the Empress of India after the Indian Rebellion of 1857--who had a fierce distaste for breastfeeding.

Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother is seen here with King George VI, in a photo taken in 1937. Photo: Reuters

Her own children, however, nursed their infants and completely disregarded their mother's advice. And so did the generations of royal mothers after that. Queen Mother Elizabeth (you might remember her as being portrayed by Helena Bonham Carter in The King's Speech), the wife of King George VI and mother to the present Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret, also nursed her daughters back in the 1920s.

Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (3L) with members of the British Royal Family pose for photographers outside her official residence, Clarence House. The Queen Mother was joined by her daughter Princess Margaret (L), her grandson Prince Charles (2L), her daughter Queen Elizabeth II (2R), her great grandson Prince Harry (R), and other members of the Royal Family for a birthday lunch. Photo: Reuters

According to The Guardian, Queen Elizabeth II followed the tradition with her four kids--Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward. She was, however, unable to breastfeed Prince Charles after the first two months, because she contracted measles. Her sister Margaret, however, had the same distaste for breastfeeding that Queen Victoria did. She famously refused to nurse her children.

Queen Elizabeth II, with her sister, Princess Margaret. Photo: Reuters

And then came Princess Diana, who married Prince Charles in 1981. Famous for her humanitarian acts and modern thinking, Diana has been credited, quite inaccurately, as being the first royal mother to breastfeed her children, William and Harry. The late princess was quite the pathbreaker where parenting is concerned, but she was not the one to introduce breastfeeding into the family.

Princess Diana, with a young Prince Harry. Photo: Reuters

Diana did not give birth at a royal palace under the supervision of private doctors, but delivered both her children in the Lindo Wing of St Mary's Hospital in London. She then went on to wean the boys herself, and as they grew up, she took them along on her and Charles' international trips and tours (something that the British Royals did not do before).

Princess Diana and Prince Charles with their children, Princes William and Harry. Photo: Reuters

Kate Middleton, Diana's daughter-in-law and the Duchess of Cambridge, is famous for following in William's mother's footsteps. She gave birth to both Prince George and Princess Charlotte in the Lindo Wing of St Mary's Hospital. According to Mirror, Kate opted for breastfeeding instead of relying on formula milk in a bottle.

Prince William and Kate Middleton, with their children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte. Photo: Reuters

William and Kate have also continued with Diana's idea of taking the kids along on their royal tours, giving the kids the company of their parents and exposure to the larger world at a young age. This is the reason this royal couple is seen as an inspiration, much like Diana was.

Prince William and Kate Middleton are setting major parenting goals. Photo: Reuters

The public births of the British Royals since Prince William in 1982 has brought focus to the fact that no matter what happened in the past, the modern mothers of the British Royal family choose to breastfeed their children rather than depend on wet nurses or formula milk.

The British Royal family, together: (R-L) Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince William, Prince Harry (behind), Prince George, Princess Charlotte, Kate Middleton, and Prince Charles.

This practice doesn't just deserve our applause, but should also inspire healthy mothers across the world to breastfeed their children for at least the first six months. After all, which child isn't a prince or princess in their mother's eyes?

(Source: India Today)

Breastfeeding in public places

My latest on breastfeeding in public places on the occasion of International Breastfeeding Week in today's Vishwavani V+. Here's the link:

Don’t infantilise pregnant women, tell them how tough breastfeeding can be

Of course British attitudes need to change, but let’s be honest, telling women about how wondrous breastfeeding can be is to tell only half the story, writes Lizzy Davies is international news editor of the Guardian:

As I type this, the clock hands are creeping towards 2.30am, and my baby daughter is slumbering beside me having had her first feed of the night. There will, unquestionably, be more. I am on hand 24/7 to meet her dietary needs, an always-open milk bar with only one thing on the menu and only one employee serving the drinks. There is very little customer feedback, though occasionally I am rewarded with a loud and strangely satisfying burp.

In my bleary-eyed state, I read that paediatricians, MPs, midwifes and other experts are calling for the “multiple barriers to breastfeeding” that exist in Britain to be broken down, and for steps to be taken so that the practice can be considered “a normal, natural part of everyday life”.

It’s hard to disagree. The UK has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world, a shameful statistic that speaks volumes about the incoherence of our approach to child-rearing. Despite the well-documented benefits of breastfeeding, only 43% of mothers in Britain will still be doing it by the time their babies are six to eight weeks old. Only 1% of babies are exclusively breastfed to six months, as the World Health Organisation recommends. It’s clear that, as a country, we have a problem.

But how to fix it? In a letter to the Guardian on Tuesday, 18 experts called for better education in schools, more practical support from healthcare services, and for the government to ensure that women aren’t put off breastfeeding by workplace constraints. I would add one more strategy: don’t baby mothers-to-be. Be honest with them about how tough breastfeeding can be.

During my pregnancy I, like thousands of other well-intentioned pregnant women, assiduously attended National Childbirth Trust (NCT) classes, merrily bought an electric breast pump, even watched a video on how to get your baby to latch on perfectly with no fuss. The background music was soothing. The baby sprang on. On a different video shown to us in our NCT class, the mother was shown adopting the “laidback” feeding position, lying down and letting the infant to do all the work. This was greatly encouraging. I could do laidback! I’d just let nature weave her magic!

 ‘To tell women that breastfeeding is a bringer of health benefits and wondrous bonding is to tell them only half the story.’ Photograph: KidStock/Getty Images

Forewarned, as our mothers, and their mothers, and their mothers, used to tell us, is forearmed
Fast forward to 20 April, at 6.28pm, and my mewling daughter, just born, is showing a distinct lack of interest in my breast. A procession of midwives – all of them kind, all of them determined to show me just how straightforward nature can be – grapple with my baby’s head and my nipple and try to bring them together in perfect harmony. It does not work. I spend my daughter’s first evening on earth painstakingly squeezing out tiny droplets of colostrum into a minuscule syringe. It is only the next day that, infuriated perhaps by my increasingly cack-handed attempts, she eventually complies. And it is then that I realise: nature can be marvellous. She can also be capricious. And it is supremely bloody painful.

Compared to many women, I got off lightly. Friends speak of months of nipple shields, jelonet gauze dressings, bleeding, cracked nipples, mastitis. And those are just the physical difficulties. The psychological challenges of breastfeeding – the pressure (yes, and privilege) of being your baby’s sole provider; the mindbending fatigue of early weeks spent half-comatose and half-dressed in the half-light – are just as formidable, perhaps even more so. One friend switched to formula at three months because, amid the sometimes terrifying anxiety of early motherhood, she needed to feel her body was once more her own.

We need to hear these voices, and act on them. To tell women that breastfeeding is a bringer of health benefits and wondrous bonding is to tell them only half the story. Is it really surprising that a first-time mother, told by all and sundry that it should be easy, painless and emotionally blissful, turns away from breastfeeding, feeling herself a failure, when none of these things turns out to be true? Are we so intent on infantilising women that we won’t tell them the truth?

Forewarned, as our mothers, and their mothers, and their mothers, used to tell us, is forearmed. Better, no-nonsense education is needed. Women need to know of the cons of breastfeeding as well as the pros, so that they are better prepared for the potential challenges ahead. So that if in the early days they are faced with a dagger-like pain, they are not shocked. So that when they are sitting alone on the sofa at 5am, they are expecting it. So that they don’t feel like failures if their bodies simply won’t cooperate. So that they are less likely to give up because of a misguided belief that if they find breastfeeding hard it is their fault. So that they can stock up on nipple cream.

Some will say that this would serve only to lower the breastfeeding rate further; that fewer women than ever will do it if they have all this spelled out to them. But in my experience new mothers will walk over hot coals if they are told it will help their babies. Moreover, they have just given birth; they are not easily scared off. So tell them breastfeeding is a magical fairytale and they will, fairly quickly, call you on it. But tell them the truth and you might just be surprised. That your wailing newborn probably won’t leap up your body via your linea nigra to your breast, like in the videos, but that that’s really OK, and that after a while, they’ll probably get the hang of it. That, yes, breastfeeding can be relentless, but if you catch yourself feeling lonely and exhausted in the middle of the night, you’re one of many. That it’s free. That it helps you lose weight. That cabbage leaves soothe the soreness and that, once the initial discomfort has passed, it can be easy and practical and really rather lovely.

It might not be the sexiest sell, but at least it’s not setting you up for disappointment and frustration. Instead, perhaps it will leave you better-equipped, both physically and mentally, to continue breastfeeding.